Many people in the world have disabilities that make it difficult or impossible for them to control aspects of their physical living environment in the same ways that ordinary people can. For example, a disabled person may not easily be able to control various living environment devices, such as clocks, phones, beds, televisions, doors, lights, elevators, VCRs, DVD players, digital video recorders, CD players, cable television boxes, tape players, stereo systems, satellite television boxes, radios, fans, thermostats, doors, windows, microwave ovens, and others. To address this need, assistive devices, referred to herein for purposes of explanation as Environmental Control Units (“ECUs”), have been developed. An increasing number of people rely on ECUs to control aspects of their living environment on a day to day basis.
In many situations, it would be desirable to manage and/or control the operation of an ECU that is located remotely. Unfortunately, existing ECUs have provided configuration interfaces that are local to the ECU. This is especially disadvantageous for hospitals, assisted living facilities, and other institutions where ECU users live or visit, and where system administrators must manage multiple ECUs located in many different locations within the facility. In such situations, using existing systems, an systems administrator must physically visit the room in which a given ECU is located in order to change its configuration. This requirement is cumbersome and inconvenient, since reconfiguration may be required whenever a new ECU user moves into a room, or when a new living environment device is added to a room. Moreover, when a problem occurs with the operation of existing ECUs, troubleshooting can only be accomplished by going to the room in which the ECU is located, in order to access the local user interface of the ECU. The difficulty of having to go to the location of an ECU to perform troubleshooting or maintenance through a local interface to the ECU is further complicated when the ECU is located in a private residence, which may be miles from the system support provider.
For the above reasons and others, it would be desirable to have a new system for managing an ECU that allows an ECU to be effectively configured and/or maintained by a remote administrator user.